Quick Take
With a 3-2 vote by supervisors Tuesday, Santa Cruz County is moving toward legalizing cannabis consumption lounges, a decision met with both cautious approval and public health concerns. Supporters see a pragmatic step toward regulating an already widespread activity, while critics warn of normalization and secondhand smoke risks.
Cannabis consumption lounges — essentially pot bars — could soon be coming to a dispensary near you after the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to draft a law allowing existing retailers to let customers smoke, and otherwise consume, products purchased onsite.
Carving out venues for people to sociably and legally enjoy cannabis has been the marquee idea atop a larger, ongoing effort to expand the cannabis industry in Santa Cruz County. Current law allows people to smoke cannabis only in their residence, which lounge supporters say is an issue for tourists, renters who don’t own their home and seniors who might reside in an assisted living community.
Officials and cannabis professionals also view the lounge idea as providing a needed economic boost to an industry that has struggled under the weight of regulation, market saturation and consolidation, and a resurgent illicit drug trade that has undercut legal profits.
The five-member board, in only its second meeting with its new configuration, offered narrow support, with rookie supervisors Kim De Serpa (District 2) and Monica Martinez (D5) voting against. Both supervisors cited their careers in public health and experiences as a parent as reasons for their opposition.
With support from Supervisors Justin Cummings (D3), Manu Koenig (D1) and Felipe Hernandez (D4), county staff will draft a new law that permits existing dispensaries to allow smoking and other types of consumption at their brick-and-mortar business, or at an adjoining site. The ordinance would affect only the 11 dispensaries within the unincorporated county, and not those within the boundaries of Santa Cruz, Scotts Valley, Watsonville or Capitola.
A county survey of its 11 dispensaries showed nine could practically accommodate a retrofit of their current locations for a consumption lounge. The other two, BigFeets in Felton and Creekside Wellness in Boulder Creek, would need to lease an adjoining site.
As with most debates about expanding cannabis policy, the conversation Tuesday veered into a relitigation around cannabis’ legalization, which California voters supported in 2016. Pushback, from public health professionals, supervisors and residents, centered around a worry that lounges would normalize cannabis use for youth.
Koenig, who with Hernandez initially brought the idea to the supervisors in November 2023, said he understood the public health concerns and argued that creating legal places for consumption of a legal product would provide a public health solution.
“If we could regulate our way to a healthy, sober society, I’d be all for it, but we can’t,” Koenig said, referencing the failed temperance movement of the 19th and early 20th centuries. “All we can do is create a framework that does the least harm. Ultimately, allowing legal places for social consumption will support that.”
Each elected in November, Martinez and De Serpa found themselves thrust into a debate that has been ongoing for nearly 15 months. Martinez criticized the county for what she viewed as a one-sided discussion, pointing out that the county’s public health department had not been formally consulted during any discussion or report involving cannabis law expansion.
On Tuesday, Martinez called county public health director Emily Chung to the lectern to weigh in on the risks of consumption lounges. Chung said studies had shown increasing cannabis retail locations normalizes use and said health officials were concerned about a potential rise in impaired driving. Chung also emphasized that whether it’s cannabis or tobacco, secondhand smoke remains dangerous.
“Allowing cannabis use indoors and making exceptions to otherwise comprehensive smoke-free laws will undermine the progress that has been made over decades to protect people who do not smoke,” Chung said.
Tara Leonard, a health educator with the county who focuses on tobacco use, told supervisors that smoke-free laws helped change the social norms around tobacco use and lowered smoking rates nationally.
“Those are public health successes that I would hope this board would celebrate,” Leonard said. “And yet, when you put the word ‘cannabis’ in front of the word ‘smoke,’ we’re suddenly all going in the other direction. It’s going to be bad, and threatens the success we’ve made.”
County cannabis licensing manager Sam LoForti said the county would require smoking lounges to be a separate room within the dispensary, equipped with powerful air filtration systems. Dispensaries would not be allowed to staff the rooms, either, so employees would not be exposed to smoke, only customers choosing to use the lounge.
The lounges would be required to maintain a negative air pressure, which means air would always exit through the ventilation system at a higher rate than it enters the room. So, when a customer opens the door to the lounge, smoke does not leak out, LoForti said. The airflow rate would be higher, he said, than what county law currently requires for rooms where workers are storing hazardous chemicals.
Dave Stackhouse, representing BigFeets dispensary in Felton, said he was also concerned about the impacts of secondhand smoke, and that consumption lounges would solve the issue.
“I think we have a problem in Santa Cruz: You can’t legally smoke weed anywhere but everybody smokes weed everywhere, secondhand smoke is everywhere, in front of kids, all over the place,” Stackhouse said. “So give [that secondhand smoke] to us. Let us have it. We will put it in our place, keep it filtered, and make it safe.”
The supervisors supported Martinez’s request that any future proposals to expand cannabis laws include a safety analysis from the county’s public health department. County staff will now work on drafting that analysis. LoForti said the ordinance is ready to go, and the supervisors will see it for the first of two final votes once public health has completed its formal consultation. LoForti could not offer a timeline.
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